Seeking Records on CBP's Participation in Domestic Law Enforcement Activities

Seeking Records on CBP's Participation in Domestic Law Enforcement Activities

For years, U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) agents have injected themselves into routine, local emergency services and law enforcement, often under the guise of providing translation services. Despite overwhelming evidence that this practice has resulted in racial discrimination and an erosion of trust between community members and law enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has a history of collecting information about individuals’ immigration status when responding to emergency service calls and participating in state, local, and federal law enforcement actions.

The Council and its partners, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), the New York Immigration Coalition, OneAmerica, the Michigan Organizing Project, and Migrant Justice, filed requests for information to help the public understand these practices and the policies underlying them pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), yet the government has refused to comply. This lawsuit, filed under FOIA by the Council, NWIRP and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, seeks to compel CBP to disclose the requested records concerning USBP agents’ practice of:

Providing translation services to local, state or other federal law enforcement agencies, and

Plaintiffs first submitted a FOIA request with DHS in 2012 seeking records related to CBP’s practice of providing language services and its involvement in 911 dispatches. In response to this FOIA, the defendants produced incomplete documents which were unlawfully and heavily redacted.